Former Guantanamo boss faces French court inquiry

Guantanamo prison ex-chief Geoffrey Miller has been summoned by a French court over the use of torture in the detention facility a decade ago, following a lawsuit from two French citizens who were former inmates of the infamous military jail.

French citizens Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali have filed a
lawsuit in a French court against the former Guantanamo chief,
demanding a criminal probe into his actions.

On Thursday, the court granted the complaint, summoning the
former American general to France for a hearing.

The French judge’s decision might set a precedent for more
prosecutions of US military personnel who served at Guantanamo
Bay.

“The door has opened for civilian and military officials to
be prosecuted over international crimes committed in
Guantanamo,” the former Guantanamo prisoners’ lawyer William
Bourdon said. “This decision can only... lead to other
leaders being summoned,” Bourdon said as cited by AFP.

Sassi and Benchellali were some of the first prisoners
incarcerated in Guantanamo in late 2001, after their arrest in
Afghanistan by US forces. Sassi was released in 2004, Benchellali
was set free in 2005, and both were brought back to France.

In a report submitted to a French court in 2014, the former Gitmo
inmates accused Geoffrey Miller of “an authorized and
systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment of persons deprived
of their freedom without any charge and without basic
rights.”

Geoffrey Miller, who was commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison
from 2002 to 2004, “bears individual criminal responsibility
for the war crimes and acts of torture inflicted on detainees in
US custody at Guantanamo,” the French court claims. The
ex-general headed the facility after President George W. Bush
approved “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Despite President Barack Obama’s promises to shut the detention
facility down, the prison that once held 779 detainees still
houses more than 100 detainees. The US government is slowly
releasing terror suspects, some of whom have spent over 10 years
at Guantanamo without any charges brought against them.

In Russia, retired US Army Major General Geoffrey D. Miller is on
a black list.

In 2013, in response to the so-called ‘Magnitsky list,’ Russia
named 18 Americans banned from entering the Russian Federation
over alleged human rights violations. Former commandant of Joint
Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), the organization that runs the
Guantanamo Bay detention camps, was added to that list, along
with other American governmental officials “involved in
legalizing torture and indefinite detention of prisoners (The
Guantanamo List).”